Meredosia Village-Wide Clean Up Taking Shape

By Benjamin Cox on June 26, 2021 at 11:12am

The Village of Meredosia is currently in clean up mode in a broader since. Village President David Werries says that the city has sent letters to people who need to clean up their property for various reasons: “There is several properties that need cleaned up. At the June board meeting, I talked to the Police Chief [Josh Weber] and he’s sent some of his officers to these addresses to talk to people. Most of them have been real receptive. They have been giving them 10 days to clean it up themselves. Most of them have got it started or have gotten it completely cleaned up. There are still a few that are our usual suspects. They have to talk them every year. We are used to it. We are going to send out some official letters here in the next week or two to ask them to hurry and get their property cleaned up. We hate to fine people, but according to our ordinance, we can fine them up to $500 a day they are not in compliance. Like I said, we hate to do that but we just hope they comply once we send out one of the letters to them.”

Werries says some of the problems is with high grass and derelict cars: “Our police will go look at the [registration] tags to see if they are good or not. A lot of the problems is just grass that’s got too high. I believe our ordinance says above 10 inches. Some of it is just junk that’s accumulated in their yard that they need to get rid of. Some people do like to wait and see when we schedule the village-wide clean up day, which we haven’t done this year because our board has been kind of waiting to see if the prisoners from the Pittsfield Work Camp are available to help out. That’s who we have usually used in the past.”

The board had recently explored using Trash Queen sanitation service, but the Village would have had to pass along the cost to residents.

Werries says he’s recently spoken with the IDOC facility and he was told that they are going to be able to work outside of the facility now that the state has lifted COVID-19 restrictions.

Werries says he hopes a village-wide clean up date can be set up by the board at July’s business meeting.

Werries says that new playground equipment has been ordered for the new park in town. He says the equipment should arrive and be installed some time in August. He says work has also begun on the park’s new pavilion.